


After the Kiss

by eva_roisin



Series: All These Stories Are True [3]
Category: Avengers Academy, X-23 (Comic), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-01
Updated: 2012-09-01
Packaged: 2017-11-13 08:38:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eva_roisin/pseuds/eva_roisin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura and Jubilee are back in town for Northstar's wedding, and they want to prove to everyone--including each other--that they've changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Kiss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heyjupiter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyjupiter/gifts).



> Takes place during Astonishing X-Men #51.

“Don’t get married,” Gambit said. 

He paused in front of the mirror to peer at himself. “Christ,” he whispered. He tugged at his tie. “Christ,” he whispered again and started to undo the knot under his chin. 

Laura and Jubilee sat on the bed in Gambit’s room, watching him fumble and swear at his dresser mirror. Jubilee gave Laura a small smile. 

Gambit said, “Ninety percent of the time, it’s a bad idea.” He knotted his tie and then paused. “No, it’s actually a good idea. It’s the execution that’s bad. People ruin a good thing by gettin’ married.”

“You want help with that tie, Remy?” Jubilee asked.

 _“Non, petite._ You just sit there and stay single.”

Logan appeared in Gambit’s doorway. He was also dressed nicely; they were both getting ready to attend Northstar’s wedding rehearsal in the city. “You guys ready to go?” he said. “C’mon, it’s late already. Traffic’s gonna be a bitch.”

Laura and Jubilee were not attending the rehearsal, but Logan had offered to drive them to the city where they could hang out for a while. Laura was glad. The Jean Grey School was crowded enough with students and grown-ups and friends of friends who had flown in to the East Coast, and the crush of people didn’t make Laura feel relaxed. If anything, seeing the people she’d left reminded her of how much things had changed. She wasn’t an X-Man anymore. She wasn’t even part of a team, not really. The rules and regulations of the Jean Grey School didn’t apply to her, and the responsibilities of being an X-Man didn’t define her. 

“Remy was just telling us not to get married,” Jubilee said. Her feet dangled over the side of Gambit’s bed. Laura immediately felt reassured by her presence.

“Good advice,” Logan said, leaning against the doorframe. “The best relationship advice I’ve heard from him yet.”

Jubilee slid from the bed. “You guys are so ridiculous.” She sounded exasperated, but she was smiling. One of her feet slipped out of her flats and she stomped it back in. “So cynical.”

“Well, let’s be cynical together in the car,” he said. “C’mon, X. You waiting for a personal invitation?”

Laura stood from the bed.

“And Gumbo, staring at yourself isn’t going to make you better looking.”

Gambit leaned forward into the mirror. “These circles under my eyes. They’re from too much teaching.”

As if to prove his point, loud music shook the walls. It shut off three seconds later. 

Logan didn’t even flinch. “You’ve only taught once this week,” he said. “Seriously, let’s move.” 

They made their way down the hallway together and out through the main entrance and to Gambit’s car, parked in the driveway. Logan had paused once to give some instructions to Rachel. All the other adults were going to the rehearsal and then to the dinner afterwards, but Rachel was watching the school. 

As they left the school, Laura looked at Jubilee. Though Laura found Jubilee’s scent difficult to categorize, she guessed she wasn’t nervous. Jubilee rarely seemed bothered by other people, least of all the people in Westchester. Laura often wondered if she’d ever ease into social situations the way Jubilee did—if this was something she could learn, like volleyball or backgammon—or if Jubilee had some special talent that couldn’t be imitated. The second thing, Laura guessed.

When Laura had arrived at the school earlier that afternoon, she’d hoped to see Jubilee right away. But she couldn’t find her anywhere. Logan carried her suitcase inside and set it in the foyer. “She’s around here somewhere,” he told her. “Take a look around.” He nodded at the rec room. “Go on. I hear voices. Go on and say hi to everyone.”

She did not want to say hi to everyone, but she didn’t tell him this. To say this would seem ungrateful, unsociable—and Laura was trying to prove to him that she had changed. He’d picked her up at the airport earlier that afternoon, a fact that surprised her. She’d thought he’d have sent Gambit or left her to her own devices to get to Westchester. But there he was, standing next to the car he’d left parked in the pick-up lane, its lights blinking. His cowboy hat was pushed back from his face. And he smiled when he saw her, as if he was truly happy she’d come home, and then he’d embraced her. “Thanks for comin’,” he said, pulling her close to his chest. He pulled back and looked at her, almost shyly. “You look great. Let me get your things.”

As she watched him toss her bag in the trunk of the car, she felt relieved—and then a little guilty. Logan had come all this way to pick her up— _Logan_. And he’d been happy to see her, too. She hadn’t expected that. In fact, she’d spent the entire flight angry with him, seething a little bit. She wasn’t really angry with him for one particular reason, just a lot of little reasons that had accumulated in her mind during the last three months. 

Since she’d been at Avengers Academy, she’d had time to think about things. About Logan, and about the rest of the X-Men. What Logan had said to her, and what he’d never said. The promises he’d made and then broken. The things he’d forgotten. The fact that he hadn’t really tried to stop her from leaving the Jean Grey School. Or the fact that he didn’t write to her, didn’t call. And she knew she was foolish for thinking that things would have changed—that things would ever change between her and Logan—but she’d still been hurt by the way he’d cut her out of his life. More hurt because it had taken so little effort for him to do so.

“He said he’d adopt me,” she confessed to Jubilee once. They were talking on the phone, late at night, when no one was supposed to be awake. Laura lay in her bed and whispered into her cell phone, hoping that no one would hear her. “He doesn’t say things like that anymore.”

“You can’t let it bother you, X,” Jubilee said. 

“I do not let it bother me,” Laura said, and her heartbeat accelerated. She wondered if Jubilee knew she was lying. She and Jubilee rarely saw each other anymore, a fact that Laura hated. But at that moment she was glad they weren’t face-to-face. “I just think it is strange. Now I live here and he lives in New York.” I thought we would live together, she wanted to add. She didn’t confess her most far-fetched fantasy of all, a fantasy that she knew most people would have labeled as weird or immature: That Logan would adopt her and they would get a house together—or maybe an apartment—and live somewhere far away from either Westchester or San Francisco. Laura would have her own bedroom. And Logan would have his work with the Avengers, but it wouldn’t consume him completely, and Laura would go to school during the day, and at night they would both come home and eat dinners of cubed steak and macaroni and cheese and watch sitcoms with canned laughter.

She was aware of lives like this, even though she’d never lived one. In books and in movies, kids lived in houses with their parents. They went to school and they came home and a mom and a dad lived there, and the family ate together and watched TV together. Sometimes the mom and the dad had only one child, a child they doted on and talked to and worried about and sometimes yelled at. Sometimes a mom even died or went away, and sometimes a dad remarried, but he remained a dad forever. 

Laura knew that this kind of fantasy was unusual in someone her age; she was getting close to the age of most kids when they went off to college. But she couldn’t help it. She’d grown up in a facility and then on the streets; her idea of “home” was a boarding school, four beds to a room, three mass-prepared meals a day in a cafeteria.

“It’s _Logan_ ,” Jubilee said. “It’s always strange with Logan. And nothing’s personal. He’s really busy and sort of like clueless about things. Not that that excuses anything, but it’s just the way he rolls. Trust me, I know from experience.” 

Laura didn’t tell Jubilee about the care package she’d received from Logan earlier that week. “Care package” was what the other kids called it; Laura just called it a box full of her stuff. 

“Woo-hoo,” Ken said when he saw it. “Care package from Wolverine. And I thought my life was exciting.”

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Julie said.

They were standing together in the lounge. Laura held the box under her arm. “Later.”

“Later?” Julie said. “But we want to see what’s in it.”

“It is nothing,” Laura said. 

“That’s easy for her to say,” Hazmat said from the sofa. She was leaning back and her arms were crossed over her chest. “No one ever sends me care packages. I guess it’s something Laura takes for granted. Must be nice to have Wolverine as like, a dad. Oh sorry, not a dad. A clone. Clone-dad.” Behind her mask she laughed.

Laura regretted that she had checked the mailroom when other people were watching.

Later she took the box to her room. She unsheathed one claw and tore through the tape. Inside the box were a few of the things she’d left behind in New York—her sneakers, her school notebooks, and her teddy bear. The things weren’t even packed that well, no styrofoam pellets. Then she caught a glimpse of a smaller box, and right away she could smell that it contained chocolate. So it _was_ a care package. Logan had sent her something nice, something to let her know that he missed her. 

She reached into the bottom of the box and pulled out the chocolates. The carton was white with gold trim, and the contents smelled good. She held the carton up to her nose and sniffed. Then she pulled it away and examined it more closely. It didn’t smell like Logan. No, it smelled like Ms. Pryde. The chocolates had not been purchased by Logan. They had not even been handled by Logan. They’d probably sat in Ms. Pryde’s office since Valentine’s Day—a gift she from some man she didn’t particularly like—and when she’d discovered that Logan was sending a package to Laura, she’d thought it a good opportunity to unload them. 

At the bottom of the box there was a scrap of paper with Logan’s handwriting. _X: Just sending along a few of your things. Let me know if you want me to send the rest. L._

Laura put her things under her bed. Then she collapsed the box to put it in the basement. She took the box of chocolates into the library, where Finesse and Reptil were studying. “You don’t want those?” Reptil said to her when he saw her laying them on the table. 

“You eat them,” Laura said, and she kept walking so she wouldn’t have to explain herself.

So when Logan picked her up at the airport that morning, she felt that maybe she should forgive him—for the chocolates, and maybe for everything else. “I did not know Northstar was getting married until Gambit called me last week,” she said as they pulled away from the pick-up lane. 

Logan checked his rearview mirror. “The whole thing was kinda sudden. It was nice of you to fly out.”

She didn’t really know Northstar that well, but when she heard that Jubilee was flying in as well, she’d decided to go. Her decision to attend had nothing to do with Northstar. 

When they pulled onto the highway, Logan asked her how she liked Avengers Academy. It was the first time he’d ever asked her about her new school. 

“Fine,” she said. She didn’t mention that she’d hated it when she’d first started there. “Has Jubilee arrived yet?” 

“She got in this morning. Gambit picked her up at Newark. She has to travel early, before the UV rays get too intense. Before she went upstairs to sleep off her jet lag, she asked when you were landing.” 

She tried not to smile. 

“So tell me about the school,” he said. “I think Avengers Academy was a good idea, don’t you?”

***

On the way to the city, Gambit sat shotgun and fiddled with the air conditioner vents. He tugged at his tie and fought Logan for control of the armrest. 

“Will you fuckin’ calm down?” Logan said, edging the car around a semi.

“Will you fuckin’ _slow_ down?” Gambit said. “You forget I’m the only one in this car who’s not immortal.” He paused. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

“Do you know where Jean-Paul’s putting me at the reception? Like, at what table?”

“Do I look like the fuckin’ wedding planner?”

Gambit settled back into his seat and adjusted the knot in his tie. 

“I doubt he put you at the same table with Rogue. He’s not that stupid.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Gambit was quiet. “Okay, that’s what I meant. You don’ think, do you?”

“You guys are friends. You can handle sittin’ next to each other at a wedding reception. Now take a Xanax already.”

Gambit tilted his head back against the headrest. “I don’ know why they’re getting married.”

Logan said nothing for a several moments. Then he said, “It’s not for us to judge. They’re adults.”

“That’s my point. Ain’t like they’re young and naïve.”

Logan was quiet again. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe it’ll get him to settle down a bit. Besides, why do you give a shit?”

“I’m sick of the drama, _homme._ You weren’t the one who had to play Dr. Phil when him and Kyle were all broken up. Which was like, two weeks ago.”

Jubilee sat up. “Jean-Paul and Kyle were broken up two weeks ago?” 

Laura caught Logan’s stare in the rearview mirror. “Girls?” he said. “You didn’t hear this conversation.” Then he turned to Gambit again. “Nice goin’.”

Next to Laura, Jubilee hunched forward. “Who the hell would we tell?”

“I don’t care,” Logan said. “Point is, this conversation never happened.”

“Yeah, yeah.” 

“I’m serious, Jubilee. No blabbing to Santo.”

Jubilee made a zipping motion over her lips.

They rode along in the car in silence. A few minutes passed. 

Then Gambit started again. “Girls, don’t get married.”

“Oh Jesus,” Logan said. 

“Marriage ruins women. It’s a really bad deal for them because they always give everything away. Seriously, girls.” He turned around in his seat to look at them. His gaze alternated between them, but it was steady and sincere. “Don’t let a man wreck your life.”

“Okay Gumbo, we get it,” Logan said, lifting one hand from the steering wheel. 

At the same time, Jubilee said, “Done and done.”

They didn’t speak for the rest of the trip. Logan dropped them off in the Upper West Side. Gambit gave them a key to his apartment where they could crash that night. 

“You have your umbrella?” Logan asked Jubilee. 

“Yes,” Jubilee said, annoyed. She opened her umbrella as she followed Laura out of the car. “Geez, I never thought I’d be one of these little old Asian ladies with an umbrella in broad daylight. And I’m dressed for an ice age.” She was wearing black pants, boots, a turtleneck, and a coat.

“Good,” Logan said, “keep it that way.” As soon as Jubilee closed the door and opened her umbrella, he hit the gas and sped away from the curb. 

Then Jubilee and Laura were alone together on the sidewalk—the first time they’d been alone since they’d both arrived back in New York. “Crazy, huh?” Jubilee said, her eyes shielded from the sun by big sunglasses. She smiled.

“Gambit’s behavior was odd. He smelled very nervous.”

“Oh, he hates weddings. You know he got married when he was a teenager, don’t you?” She took Laura’s arm in hers and started to nudge her down the street. They walked together under the umbrella.

Laura said, “I did not . . . know that.”

“Well, the whole thing was a disaster. Ever since then, he’s had this hang-up about weddings. Until the big day is over, he’s totally impossible to live with.”

“Did he tell you that?” Laura said. She meant, _about his marriage_. She couldn’t help but feel hurt. During all the time they’d traveled together, Gambit had never told her about a wedding. 

“Storm did. Now let’s go check out his place. I have a feeling it’s posh as all hell.”

Just then, a teenage boy on a bicycle blew past them. “Hey freak!” he called out. “It’s ninety degrees outside!” And before they had a chance to respond, he was gone. 

“Asshole,” Jubilee said. 

“He is wrong,” Laura replied. “It’s not ninety degrees. Only eighty-seven point five.” She knew this because they’d passed a bank.

“All the same, I do look stupid. I can’t wait till the sun goes down so I can get out of this gear.” She tightened her arm around X’s. “So, anything interesting going on at Avengers Academy?”

Laura knew that when Jubilee asked if anything interesting was going on, she meant boys. “Not really.”

“Not really?”

She thought of the boys at Avengers Academy. None of them interested her. More to the point: all of them were off limits, even if she’d been so inclined. “No.”

“But you sure talk enough about Dr. Pym.”

“Jubilee,” Laura said. She almost stopped walking. 

“What? It’s perfectly okay to have a crush on a teacher. Though if I were you, I’d probably obsess over that sexy-as-hell Clint Barton.”

“ _Jubilee_ ,” Laura repeated. “Dr. Pym is . . . my friend.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good.” Jubilee seemed mildly disappointed. “So tell me about him.”

Laura didn’t know where to begin. When she thought of Dr. Pym, she couldn’t help but feel a gratitude she couldn’t articulate. No one had ever given her such a big chance before—not Wolverine, maybe not even Gambit. 

“He has put me in charge of the animals,” she said. 

Jubilee glanced at her. “Yeah?”

“Two rabbits, four guinea pigs, and some hamsters. I am responsible for feeding them, cleaning their cages, and making sure they get exercise.”

“Huh,” Jubilee said thoughtfully. 

Laura could tell that Jubilee didn’t know what she was getting at. She said, “He lets me do this despite the fact that when I first arrived at the Academy, I sneaked into the lab and tried to steal the animals so I could set them free. Dr. Pym caught me.”

“Shut up,” Jubilee said. “You never told me this.”

Laura remembered the event clearly. She’d been planning on smuggling the animals outside to a place in back of the campus, beyond the stream. Dr. Pym had walked into the lab as she was putting a guinea pig into her backpack. “I didn’t apologize,” she said to Jubilee. “I told him that animals should not be kept in cages. Or used for experiments.”

Dr. Pym had looked a bit shocked, but he recovered right away. He pointed out to her that he didn’t use the animals for scientific experiments. “Laura,” he said, and she’d never before heard her name spoken with so much concern. “They’re domesticated animals. If you put them outside, they won’t survive. You know this.”

She held the guinea pig against her chest. It wiggled slightly, warm and alive. “At least they would be free.”

“Laura,” he said again. “Outside they’ll die. Are you saying that it’s better to die than to live with us in here?”

What a question! Only someone who had never lived in a cage would ask such a thing. “Yes.”

Dr. Pym seemed to reconsider her. “I don’t believe that you really feel that way. You care about these animals.” He paused. Then he gestured to the guinea pig. “I can tell you care by the way you’re holding him. Starvation and exposure . . . you know that’s not a good way to go.”

She ran her thumb along the scruff of the guinea pig’s neck and felt its whiskers brush against her arm. She’d thought then that Dr. Pym would ask her to hand it over or put it back in the cage. But he didn’t. The moment lengthened. She didn’t say anything—not because she wanted to have to agree or disagree with Dr. Pym, but because she saw the situation for what it was. She now understood what she’d planned to do all along: take the animals out to the stream and quietly kill them. Yes, she would have done this. She would have reached the stream and realized that the air was cold and the grass dry—how inhospitable to animals. And because she couldn’t have taken the animals back inside to captivity, she would have been forced to put them down. 

She turned away and put the guinea pig back in its cage, mildly horrified, wondering if she’d ever be able to cut ties with her former self. Despite all her soul-searching, she was still the same girl she’d been at the facility and with X-Force—the type of girl who understood compassion only when it was paired with death.

“I’m sorry,” she said, unable to face Dr. Pym. “I should not have done this.” She wanted a quiet place to think. 

“Laura—” Dr. Pym sounded like he was about to launch into something, but then he paused. “This merits a much larger discussion, but I don’t think either of us is up for it now. Go to bed. Come to my office tomorrow morning.”

That night, Laura lay in bed, feet away from her roommates, but she didn’t sleep. She thought about getting up, packing her bags, and leaving the Academy. But where would she go? She didn’t want to go back to Westchester—she’d have too much explaining to do. And she despised the thought of going to Utopia, even if Jubilee was there. She thought about calling Gambit, but she didn’t want him to get riled up. She also didn’t want to be someone he had to rescue all the time.

Since she’d come to the Academy, she’d been a poor student at everything except combat training. She cut class all the time and didn’t bother to socialize with the other students. “It’s the X-Man thing,” Hazmat said one evening, loud enough so that Laura could hear her. “She thinks she’s better than us.”

Laura didn’t think she was better than anyone. She was just tired of school. In the past eighteen months, she’d started over three times—first at the Xavier Institute, then at Utopia, and now at Avengers Academy. She was tired of the fact that she never got used to a place before it got hijacked or destroyed, or before she was asked to go somewhere else. 

Surprisingly, she’d done her best schoolwork when she was in X-Force. Because she’d had to budget her time wisely, she simply opened her books and did her work. Calculus. Literature. Physics. Ethics. When X-Force was finished and she came back to Utopia, she was given some tests to complete. She never got the results—she ran away before Cyclops or Ms. Frost could tell her how she did. 

So when she came to Avengers Academy, she was asked what classes she’d been taking at Utopia. And she was then enrolled in similar classes. But she was tired of school, tired of studying. Running away, traveling with Gambit—these things had taught her everything she needed to know about rebellion. She didn’t want to take orders anymore. She didn’t want to do anything. After a week of halfheartedly attending her classes, she started to skip. She left the Academy each morning to go exploring, to see the city. And no one stopped her. Hawkeye raised an eyebrow once when she came late to archery, but he didn’t say anything. 

She let it slip once to Jubilee, what she was doing. One day she was milling around downtown Los Angeles when Jubilee called her with a question. She was answering it, but the traffic was noisy and she had to stop talking while a police car passed.

“Where are you?” Jubilee said.

“Echo Park.”

“Jesus, X. What the hell are you doing there?”

“Nothing.”

“But why aren’t you in school?”

“I don’t wish to be.”

“Wait, Laura—” Laura could tell that Jubilee was trying to find a more private place to talk. Then her voice came again, quiet and concerned. “You’ve left the Academy?”

“No. I . . . haven’t been attending class.” She looked up. The city’s skyline was in her line of vision, big and imposing. 

“Oh my gosh, Laura. You can’t just not go to class.” 

“But you don’t go to class either,” Laura said.

“Laura, I’m a vampire. I can’t be around kids. Plus,” she added, “I’m dumb. I was never good at school anyway. And now it doesn’t matter.”

“That’s not true,” Laura said, and she knew she should ask Jubilee what was really going on in her life. But Jubilee didn’t like to talk about herself; she steered each conversation to something else. 

“Give it another shot, X,” Jubilee said. “Promise me, okay?”

So when Laura met with Dr. Pym, she wondered if she’d get kicked out. And she didn’t wonder how Wolverine or Gambit might react when they heard the news—but how Jubilee would react. Laura had made her a promise.

When she entered his office that morning, Dr. Pym was not smiling, but he did not seem hostile or angry. He told her to take a seat. 

“Are you going to kick me out?” she said before he had the chance to say anything.

Dr. Pym peered at her from the other side of his desk. “Is that what you want?”

She thought for a moment. Then she shook her head. 

Dr. Pym folded his hands in front of him. “I don’t want to keep you here if you’re not happy. And though we allow our students a great deal of freedom to come and go as they please, we do have enrollment requirements.”

Laura looked down. If you’re not happy, Dr. Pym had said. She’d never thought about school in terms of happiness—only in terms of something that had to be done. Just as she’d thought about X-Force. 

When she didn’t respond, Dr. Pym picked up his end of the conversation. “When you stopped coming to class, I took another look at your file.”

Laura’s heartbeat hastened. Her file. Then she realized that he meant her academic records, not other kinds of records. Not facility records.

“There wasn’t a whole lot to go on, so I called Wolverine. When he never called me back, I called Emma Frost.”

Laura’s heart rate hadn’t yet had the chance to slow down; when Dr. Pym mentioned Ms. Frost, she wanted to bolt from the room. 

“The business between the X-Men?” Dr. Pym shook his head slightly. “We Avengers aren’t as territorial. The people at Utopia were happy to fax me your test scores.” He turned around in his chair and grabbed a piece of paper from the bookshelf behind him. “Outstanding performance in calculus, physics, chemistry, English . . . and you’re fluent in a few languages. It occurs to me that I don’t have the faculty or the resources to offer you the kind of classes you might find challenging. The rest of our students are still fulfilling core requirements. Some are studying for the GED.”

Laura wondered where the conversation was going. When she’d entered Dr. Pym’s office, she’d figured she was going to be expelled. Now she had no idea what he was getting at. 

“Ideally, I’d like to see you take college classes. We can get discounted tuition through the state system.” He studied her for a moment. “Does that idea not appeal to you?”

It didn’t. But if she told him the truth—that she planned not to go to college, not ever—he might not like her answer. 

“Are you intimidated by being with older kids? Because, as someone who went through the same thing, I can tell you that it’s not really a big deal.”

“I don’t want to go to college,” she said. “School is too institutional.”

“Oh, I think you’ll find that college isn’t all that institutional.”

“I do not want to go to college,” she said, this time more firmly. “I am certain.” 

Dr. Pym sat back. “Okay,” he said slowly. He opened his hands. “What are your favorite subjects?”

She liked archery with Clint Barton. And volleyball with Tigra. She told him this.

“So you like sports.”

“I like being on a team.”

“What about art? Or music?” He swiveled his chair to look through his bookshelf. Moments later he sat up and placed a book on his desk. “What about woodworking? Here, let me show you something.” He opened the book and pointed to a wooden structure that looked like a cross between a dog run and a maze. 

“What is it?” she said.

“After our conversation last night, I lay awake thinking about what you said. About animals. I agree that they shouldn’t be in cages either. But we can’t just set them free. So I would like you to build a different kind of structure for them—something that will allow them to be both freer and safe. Maybe one outside and one inside, if that sounds doable.”

She glanced down at the book. 

“I want to put you in charge of the animals,” he said. 

At that moment, she thought that Dr. Pym had misjudged her very severely. She almost thought less of him. He didn’t know anything about her—if he did, he wouldn’t have wanted her around animals. “I don’t know,” she said.

He looked at her, waiting for her to elaborate. When she didn’t, he said, “Have a go at it. If you hate it, we’ll find something else for you to do.” 

***

“Wow,” Jubilee said. “So what did you do next?”

Laura shrugged. She and Jubilee had located Gambit’s apartment building on the tree-lined street. “I started to build it.”

“You are the queen of understatement, X,” Jubilee said, waving the key fob in front of the door. It beeped and Jubilee pulled the door open. “I mean, did Dr. Pym totally love what you built? Was he like, ‘Laura, no one has ever done something so amazing in the history of Avengers Academy’?” 

“No.” 

“I was kidding. Here we are.” She stopped in front of Gambit’s door and put the key in the lock. She pushed open the door and went inside. “Holy shit.”

Laura followed her. The apartment was large loft, with long windows and high ceilings. It was also tastefully decorated—paintings, matching furniture, bookshelves. 

“We’re looking at so much tax evasion,” Jubilee said. 

Laura skimmed her hand over the bookshelf. 

Jubilee moved to the sitting area and flounced onto the couch. “I wonder what the rent runs him here. You know,” she said, turning her head to look over the back of the couch at Laura, “Emma Frost said this mean thing about Gambit, and I’ve never been able to get it out of my head. She said that his obsession with looking cultured was evidence of him trying to cover up his white trash roots.” Jubilee turned around again. “She didn’t say ‘white trash,’ but that’s basically what she meant. I hate Emma Frost.”

Laura came around to sit on the sofa. “I do not know how you tolerate her. I would never return to the X-Men, least of all because of her.”

Eyes cast downward, Jubilee played with a ring on her index finger. “Yep,” she said, almost to herself. 

Laura felt bad. She hadn’t meant to disavow the X-Men so adamantly—not when Jubilee had little choice but to live with them. Before she had the chance to amend her statement, Jubilee reached into her back pocket.

“Got something for you,” she said, holding out a card. 

Laura took it. It was a fake ID. 

“We’ll hit the clubs tonight,” Jubilee said. “I’ve already got some places in mind.”

“Jubilee,” Laura said, studying the ID. “This girl looks nothing like me. This girl is Asian.”

“Nobody’s going to be looking at your face, X.” Jubilee rose from the couch. “Come on, let’s get ready.”

Laura followed Jubilee into the bedroom, already searching for an excuse, for a reason they shouldn’t go. She didn’t want to go to the clubs. She just wanted to be with Jubilee, maybe in a quiet place like a movie theater or a coffee shop. 

“Did Logan and Gambit say it was okay for us to go out?”

Jubilee turned to give her an amused look. “Don’t tell me the Avengers have you following rules now. And I doubt Logan or Gambit would give a shit.”

“No, I meant—”

Jubilee was already unzipping a duffel bag she brought. She took out a dress.

“Maybe it would be dangerous for us. Out there. With other people.” 

Jubilee leveled her gaze. “What do you mean?” Without waiting for Laura to respond, she dropped a pair of shoes onto the floor. “You think I can’t handle a crowd? I go out all the time. I’m not going to get all bloodthirsty just because, you know, the lights go down.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Whatever. Did you bring something to wear? Here, try this on.” Jubilee thrust a top into Laura’s arms. It was a purple shirt with sequins. “What are you planning to wear to the wedding? It has to be something sexy enough so that Creepy McCreepy realizes what a huge mistake he made in treating you bad.” 

Creepy McCreepy was what Jubilee called Julian. Laura had seen him earlier that day when she was looking for Jubilee—Julian had come around the corner so quickly that she hadn’t had time to prepare herself. He’d averted his gaze and puffed out his chest as acted as though he hadn’t seen her at all. Everything that had happened between her and Julian felt as if it had happened to someone else.

“I love weddings because it always seems like something important could happen,” Jubilee said. She turned around started to undress, pulling her shirt over her head and unfastening her pants. 

“Something important is happening. Northstar is marrying his boyfriend.”

“I’m talking about us. Like, some guy could fall out of the sky for you, you never know.”

Laura reluctantly took off her jacket and laid it on the bed. 

“Or like, maybe Gambit will finally stop flirting with Cecilia and just ask her out.” She shuffled her dress over her head. “Could you zip me?”

Laura reached over and pulled the zipper up. 

“Now you’ll have to tell me if I look okay,” Jubilee said, turning around. She ran her fingers through her hair and then put both hands on her hips. Her eyes were warm and soft. “I can’t check myself out anymore. So how do I look?”

Jubilee looked pretty—beautiful, even. The dress fit her perfectly. When she smiled she had dimples, and Laura thought that no one would mistake her for a vampire if they didn’t really know her. 

Jubilee always told Laura that she was pretty—that she turned heads and drew stares. But the truth was that Jubilee was prettier, and not just because of the way she looked. She was outgoing and gregarious, popular for the right reasons. She was the sort of girl who’d always have friends, vampire or not. She made people feel special—even when they were not obviously likable. Like Laura. 

“You look healthy,” Laura said.

“That’s a compliment I’ll accept,” Jubilee said, adjusting her earrings. “Considering the fact that I’m technically dead.” She didn’t stop smiling. “You want me to do your make-up?” 

***

The last time Laura had gotten dressed up to go out, she’d been with Avengers Academy for two months. Dr. Pym and Tigra had taken her class to see a ballet in downtown Los Angeles. It was Friday evening; Finesse, Reptil, and Julie had come, but Hazmat and Mettle had stayed back at the school. “Ballet is boring,” Hazmat told her while they were walking back to the dorm after lunch. “And there’s something really gross and weird about guys in tights. You’ll see what I mean. Sometimes junk is best left to the imagination.”

Laura hadn’t known what to expect from a ballet. She’d been to only one in her life—as an assassin. She couldn’t tell you what it was about, just that her targets had been sitting in the mezzanine, two men and a woman. She’d killed them right after intermission. No one had noticed. She’d been out the back door before anyone knew they were dead.

With the lights down in the theater, it was difficult not to think about this past event. She wondered, briefly, who those people had been—if they’d done something terrible to deserve such a fate, or if they’d ended up on her kill list arbitrarily. She tried not to wonder if they had families. Certainly they must have had families, everyone did. 

When the curtains went up and the stage lights came on, she put aside her despair. Dancers spun from the wings of the stage. They danced in pairs. They carried each other, entwined. They leapt and struggled, but not with themselves, and not against each other. Laura watched as they moved seamlessly. Everything seemed to fall into place without much effort—odd, because Laura knew that dancing required effort. Movement at such an advanced level required practice and constant training. Fighting, of course, required practice and constant training. But Laura recognized that this kind of movement wasn’t like fighting. Fighting was utilitarian. Even when it was done well, and even when it accomplished what it was supposed to, it wasn’t beautiful.

 _Well, it wasn’t pretty._ That was something Logan used to say when they finished an X-Force mission. _Well, it wasn’t pretty, but we got the job done._

 _What if, what if,_ Laura thought. What if she did something like dance? She might have been able to execute the movements—she had the flexibility and the strength. What if, what if. 

Dancing surprised her; it made her reconsider what she knew about the body. All her life, she had used her body to accomplish certain things—to kill, for instance, or to maim. And bodies—your own body, other people’s bodies—were things you had to overcome. They had limitations. They were heavy. They took up space. Sometimes you had to push them out of the way to get what you wanted. Sometimes another person’s body was the thing you wanted, but in subduing it, or in bringing it down, you experienced no joy—only the satisfaction of completing another mission.

Dancers used their bodies for joy—for making themselves happy, and for making other people feel things—and this, Laura decided, was why she could not be a dancer. 

When the curtains came down and the lights went on, Laura looked up, startled. “It’s over?” she asked Dr. Pym. 

“Intermission,” Dr. Pym said, pointing down at his program. “You can get a drink if you want.”

Reptil stirred beside her and yawned. “I fell asleep too.” 

The ballet had made her feel things—happier and sadder than she’d felt in a long time. She didn’t know how to handle those feelings, how to hold them inside her all at once. This swirl of emotions made her anxious and nauseated. “May I be excused?” she asked Dr. Pym.

“Of course,” he said, standing to let her out of her seat. “But the show starts again in ten minutes.”

In the aisle, she paused in front of him. “Is it acceptable if I wait in the lobby for the show to end?” She didn’t make eye contact with him. 

“Are you okay?”

“I am not good in crowds.”

“Do you want one of us to wait with you?”

She paused. “I do not want you to miss the show.”

In the lobby she sat on the steps that went up to the balcony. She thought about how beautiful the dancers had been—so beautiful—and how this made her anxious. One of her legs twitched. She wanted to get up and pace. Worse, she wanted to go into the bathroom and open her wrists. The blood would run into the sink, and is it did so it would calm her down, still her heart. (At moments like this, she understood why people smoked meth and walked into traffic.) 

What stopped her from going into the bathroom was the promise she’d made to Gambit—as well as the prospect of getting caught. She didn’t want to get caught. At Avengers Academy she was still new; she didn’t want to ruin everything. She didn’t want to be the center of some big, memorable scene in a public restroom—blood everywhere, people traumatized. Already no one at school liked her, not really, and she could accept that. But if she caused a scene, she would have to live with the fact that her unpopularity was truly her fault.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the railing. Then, someone approached. When she opened her eyes she saw shoes. She looked up to see Dr. Pym.

“Are you all right?” Without waiting for her answer, he sat down next to her. “Are you sick?” 

She shook her head. She knew her face was flushed. She must have looked sick—perhaps Dr. Pym was wondering what could make a girl with a healing factor so ill. 

He sat next to her for a few long moments. Then he put an arm on her shoulder very slowly, tentatively. As if he was trying not to startle her. “Let’s get you home.”

“What about the others?”

“Tigra will drive them. We’ll take a cab back.” He nudged her to her feet. 

Before she had time to protest, he guided her out the door and into a cab. She settled against the window as he gave the cabdriver directions. In the cab she could think about other things—the way the seats smelled or how many people had ridden in the car that evening. She could distract herself. She could make her darkness go away.

“I’m sorry I’m making you miss the show,” she said, watching the city pass by. “I did not intend for this to happen.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dr. Pym said. “I like ballet as much as anyone, but missing the last act isn’t the end of the world.”

She slowly turned to look at him, and she tried to relax her hands so that they weren’t balled into tight fists. I can be normal if I want, she thought. I can make people think I’m normal. “It was nice of you and Tigra to take us. I have never seen a ballet. I loved it.”

“Really?” In the dark he studied her.

“My friend Jubilee likes to dance. She’s good at it. I think she could have been a ballet dancer if she’d wanted to. She was once a gymnast. She tries to get me to dance, but I’m terrible at things like that.” 

“I know of Jubilee.” Dr. Pym’s voice was quiet.

“She is a vampire now. She was made a vampire against her will. Sometimes,” she began. She heard herself trail off.

“What?” 

She turned to look out the window. Sometimes she wished she’d been made a vampire instead of Jubilee. Not that she wanted to be a vampire. It was just that she was accustomed to things like that happening to her. She would have dealt with it. She would have been okay. Jubilee, on the other hand, seemed so stunned by the turn of events that had made her into a predator. And even though she rarely talked about it, Laura could tell that she missed normalcy—the warmth of the sun on her skin, the ability to walk down the street without smelling people, or sizing them up as potential prey. 

When they arrived back at the Academy, Laura thanked Dr. Pym once again and went to her room. She shuffled off her shoes and went to bed, still dressed. By the next morning she’d be able to appear normal again. When Dr. Pym knocked on her door to check on her, she pretended to be asleep.

***

Jubilee walked quickly along the sidewalk, and Laura tried to keep up. They’d already been out to eat—a small restaurant near Central Park. Well, Laura had done the eating. She still felt rude about eating in front of Jubilee, but Jubilee said she didn’t mind. Occasionally she took a drink from a flask in her coat pocket. Laura didn’t ask, but she knew it was Wolverine’s blood.

Jubilee nodded at Laura’s plate. “That’s all you’re eating? Salad and tofu?”

“I have become a vegetarian.”

“Good thing you’re not still with Wolvie,” Jubilee said. “He’d give you a hard time.”

“Do you think you’ll ever return to Wolverine?”

Jubilee stopped smiling. “I’d like to think that someday things will be different and we’ll all be together again. But realistically?” She made a face that resembled a grimace. “The X-Men can be so rude. Man, I doubt that Cyclops and Emma RSPV’d to Northstar’s invitation. I doubt they’ll even send a gift.”

“What did they say when you decided to go?”

Jubilee started to rifle through her purse. “I didn’t tell them I was going.” She took a five from her wallet. Even though she never ordered anything, she always tipped. “I don’t exactly talk to them these days.”

“But how do you—”

“Here.” Jubilee laid down several bills next to Laura’s plate. Then she started to rise from the table.

“Jubilee, you don’t have to pay for my dinner.”

“Dinner’s on me, drinks are on you. C’mon, X.”

As Jubilee had predicted, Laura had no trouble getting into the nightclub. She had hoped to stick to the sidelines, but Jubilee pulled her to the dance floor. There weren’t very many people there yet, but Laura felt warm under the lights. Clubs always smelled like a certain mixture of carbon dioxide, sweat, and alcohol, and on the dance floor these smells were more intense. Overwhelming, even. She didn’t like it. 

“You okay, X?” Jubilee shouted over the music. 

Laura nodded. She wondered if her discomfort was that obvious.

Jubilee stopped dancing and reached for her hand. “If you don’t like it here we can try somewhere else.”

“It’s fine,” Laura said. “But I think I will get a drink.”

At the bar Laura ordered a whiskey sour—a drink she always ordered in these situations because it reminded her of Logan. 

After two songs, Jubilee appeared next to her. “Do you want to go? We can do something else if you’re not into this.”

Laura tried to smile. “You should dance.”

Jubilee extended her right hand. “Dance with me.”

A slow song started. Well, it wasn’t slow, exactly—just slower than the dance music that had been playing. Jubilee continued to hold out her hand. 

Laura pointed to her drink. “I’ll finish this and then find you.”

When Jubilee turned back to the dance floor, Laura then realized what she’d turned down: the opportunity to be near someone she really liked—to throw her arms around Jubilee and stay like that for the duration of a song.

***

The animals were a big responsibility, but Laura never felt overwhelmed. Each day, she went early to Dr. Pym’s lab so that she could feed them and begin work on the structure. She let the hamsters run around in plastic see-through balls. She released the rabbits from their cages and kept an eye on them as she worked. This wasn’t difficult, because they never went far. They were prey animals, cautious about open spaces. 

She liked the rabbits best. People thought rabbits were stupid, but they responded to her. They responded to touch, to affection. They were more like dogs than people realized.

“What did you do to deserve shit duty?” Hazmat said to her one afternoon when she came down to fill a bottle of water from Dr. Pym’s cooler. 

“Shit duty?”

“We’ve all had to clean up after Pym’s rodents. It’s a notch above cleaning the bathroom. God, what did you do?”

When Laura didn’t respond, Hazmat looked away. “Can you come to my room tonight and help me with some chemistry problems? I suck at chemistry.”

Laura nodded. Hazmat was an unpleasant person, but Laura didn’t mind her so much. In a way she appreciated Hazmat’s honesty about things. 

Sometimes Dr. Pym came to his lab in the mornings. He always greeted Laura and commented on the progress she’d made. “It’s coming along,” he said one morning, studying the structure. “I think you’ve almost got it.”

“I miscalculated with the wings and had to do them over again. In fact, I think I might need more wood.”

“That’s okay,” Dr. Pym said quickly as if to reassure her. 

Laura was busy designing a door for the structure as well, one that the animals could open. She had read that animals liked to be challenged.

In fact, when she wasn’t busy building or tending to the animals, she was reading about their behavior, their temperaments, their habits. She searched for information on the internet and checked a book out of the library called Pets and People, which she read each night before going to bed. This was always the way it was with her: when she was interested in something she fixated on it. But previously, she hadn’t had the space to exhaust her obsessions, or the time to follow them until they eventually faded away.

Dr. Pym had once said something to her about becoming an animal behaviorist. She hadn’t said anything back. She didn’t understand why adults always looked toward the future, why they wanted to cast you in a role you didn’t yet understand. 

She began to talk to Dr. Pym. First it was just to tell him about the rabbits—how much they were eating, for instance, or whether or not they fought with each when she let them out. One of the rabbits bullied the others, a situation she monitored. 

Little by little, she started to tell Dr. Pym about other things. Not about anything fraught or damning—not about X-Force or her childhood at the facility—but about smaller details. Likes and dislikes. She told him that she had traveled to Paris and enjoyed it. She told him that she had babysat for the Richards children, which she didn’t enjoy as much.

When she talked he always listened. He put down his papers or his lab equipment to give her his full attention. In his presence she felt interesting, even though she knew she wasn’t. Her stories were short and to-the-point. Her voice—she could hear it sometimes when she spoke—was clipped and emotionless. She didn’t express herself in the way that most people did: her voice didn’t go up and down with excitement or dismay. 

One afternoon she was telling Dr. Pym why she’d decided to become a vegetarian, how she’d seen a movie about the meatpacking industry, all the animals in cages and suffering, unable to stand, filthy, sick, never allowed to see daylight. Dr. Pym was telling her that you could make the choice to buy free-range beef, but Laura wasn’t convinced. How did you know the animals had been treated well? And even if an animal lived a nice life, this didn’t justify killing it for your own pleasure.

“I don’t want any animal to suffer because of me,” she said, bending over to pick up a piece of wood. “Not even a little.” Too many people and animals had already suffered because of her.

Dr. Pym studied her. He looked like he wanted to say something.

“If you do not use these animals for experiments, then why do you have them?” she asked.

“A behavioral study I ran a few years ago. It had to do with scent and cognition. After it was over, I realized I’d grown attached.”

Laura reached under a steel shelf to locate Gunther, the biggest rabbit. He was crouched against the wall. She slowly reached back to retrieve him. “I don’t think animals should be used for any kind of study. Ever.”

Dr. Pym’s chair creaked. Then he said, “What if studying them can help both them and us?”

Laura managed to wrap her hands around Gunther. She pulled him from under the shelf and sat up to look at Dr. Pym. “It’s still wrong because they can’t consent. A person can choose whether or not to be part of an experiment. But an animal doesn’t have that power. An animal should be left to live its life, free from human interference.”

“But what if a study has the potential to save human life? Look,” he said, sitting back. “I don’t mean to sound defensive. Or pious. I agree with you for the most part, and I do my best to minimize the impact a study has on animal’s life. But, for me at least, human life is more important.”

Laura held the rabbit. She wondered how long he’d let her hold him—he usually squirmed after a few seconds. 

“I’m not telling you how to think or what to believe,” Dr. Pym said. “Certainly a lot of other people share your position. But it’s important to consider multiple sides of an issue.”

“Do animals have souls?”

Dr. Pym seemed surprised by her question. “I don’t know.”

“Because if they have souls, then it’s wrong to experiment on them, no matter what.” She opened the hutch and gently laid the rabbit inside. 

“I don’t know if that question is answerable,” Dr. Pym said. “As a scientist . . . the issue of the soul . . . it’s far beyond me.”

Laura watched the rabbit as he sniffed his fresh cedar chips and found his water, satisfied to be back in a home that was clean and warm. “But why?” she whispered. “I think it’s a question worth thinking about.”

“You’re right, and many people have wrestled with the question. But even defining what a soul is . . . let alone proving its existence . . . I’m not sure that science can answer that question right now.”

She turned to look at him. “I have often heard that clones don’t have souls. That we’re not real.”

“Who told you that?”

She shrugged and looked down. 

“Laura,” he said. He got up from his chair and walked around the table so that he was standing in front of her. “You know that’s not true.”

“But you just said that we can’t know.”

“I said that science can’t answer the question.” He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Maybe you should talk to someone.”

“Someone who knows more than you do?”

He smiled, and the smile seemed both spontaneous and charmed. “Yes, someone who knows more than I do. But I’m not talking about someone who can tell you whether animals have souls. I’m talking about . . . has Wolverine ever made you see a therapist?”

She felt her stomach lurch. 

He had not, of course. Wolverine was not a proponent of therapy—not only because he didn’t believe in it, but because he was skittish about divulging secrets. And Laura safeguarded some of the X-Men’s worst secrets. 

“I—I’m sorry,” Dr. Pym said, sensing her discomfort. “I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just, sometimes talking to people can help.”

No, she thought. It didn’t help. It made you relive things. For normal people—people like Dr. Pym—therapy provided insights. But for Laura there would be no insights, only facts. Pieces strewn about, a great mess of fragments that wouldn’t fit together in any logical way.

“I don’t know exactly what you’ve been through,” Dr. Pym continued, “but I know that you’re sensitive and intelligent. And I know it’s got to be difficult to live with—”

“What has Wolverine told you about me? Has he said things?”

“Laura, I don’t have to talk to Wolverine to see that you’re not happy.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” Laura took a step back. Wolverine was always ruining things for her, making it so that she never had an honest chance. She could never live in a place where she could divulge secrets on her own terms. “Did Wolverine tell you I used to be a prostitute?”

Dr. Pym stared at her. “No. He didn’t.”

“Does that shock you?” She scanned his face. It didn’t shock him. “Did he tell you that sometimes I hurt myself?”

“No. I didn’t know that.” He reached out to touch her arm. “Laura, listen—”

She twisted away. “I am done having this conversation.”

As Laura made her way from Dr. Pym’s lab, she fixated on the things around her. _Doorknob. Hallway. Cafeteria._ She went upstairs. _Archway. Threshold. Door. Outside._ She passed a group of students in the courtyard; they might have called to her, she didn’t know. 

Outside near the trees she was alone, but she wasn’t sure if being alone was a welcome development. There were many things she thought about doing at that point—going to the highway and leveling her thumb, or walking for a really long time. She wanted to move, to forget the fact that things at Avengers Academy had gone well, and then, in the space of minutes, they had turned bad. And she had been the one to ruin everything—not Wolverine.

She heard her name. She leaned against the tree and tried to make herself less conspicuous. 

“Laura,” Dr. Pym said from across the field. He waved to her, slightly harried. “Laura,” he said again as he got closer.

She crossed her arms in front of her chest and waited for him to approach. 

“Laura,” he said when he was close enough to speak to her without raising his voice, “I’m sorry for how things went back there. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

She stared at him, stunned. Why was he the one apologizing? She had reacted badly. She had stormed off. 

“I was only trying to help,” he said. “But I understand that sometimes offers of help can come across as . . . I’m not saying that I think there’s something wrong with you that you need fixed.”

Laura regarded him skeptically. (What he just told her didn’t seem possible.)

“I suggested therapy—talking to someone—because I thought it might help you see that the bad things that had happened to you weren’t your fault. You didn’t bring them to you. You didn’t call them into existence. They happened.”

Laura swallowed. She felt her face tense up. She didn’t want to cry, she wouldn’t cry, it was just . . . She clenched her upper arms with each hand. When she swallowed again, she felt more in control.

She still didn’t look up at Dr. Pym because she was afraid she’d cry. Instead she looked straight ahead and said, “When I was with the X-Men, Emma Frost always tried to read my mind. I hated it. She said she was trying to help me.”

“That’s wrong.”

Laura closed her eyes and ran her fingertips over her forehead. “I know she is powerful—and maybe she could help me, but I didn’t want her to see—I didn’t want those things—”

Dr. Pym stepped closer to her and lowered his voice. “I’m sorry that happened to you. But it won’t happen to you here. You have my word.” He stepped back and then gestured for her to follow him. “It’s almost dinner. Were you planning to eat here tonight?”

She stepped away from the tree and nodded quickly. As she walked back to the building with Dr. Pym, she thought about something else. “If Wolverine calls—”

Dr. Pym turned to look at her, and immediately she felt self-conscious again. “Yeah?” he said.

“If Wolverine calls, could you tell him to send the rest of my things?” As soon as she spoke, she understood how unlikely it was that Wolverine would call to ask about her. And Dr. Pym knew that too. 

But Dr. Pym just smiled. “I’ll call him for you,” he said. “If you want me to.”

***

Maybe the drink emboldened her a little bit. When Laura drained her glass, she decided she would try to dance. She would find Jubilee on the dance floor and follow her lead, doing the best she could to keep up.

She slid from her barstool and headed in the direction of the dance floor, trying to ignore how the pulse of the music made everything disorienting. You could lose yourself to it, she knew, the way you could lose yourself to too much darkness, or too much light, or too much sleep. Laura didn’t like these sounds and smells—she associated them with the back rooms of private parties. 

The dance floor was more crowded now than when she and Jubilee had first entered the club. I have to find her, Laura thought, and this imperative propelled her forward. But in the crowd, Jubilee seemed to hide from her. She was always both near and far off. Every girl with dark hair at first was a possibility, but when Laura drew closer she realized she was looking at a stranger. 

On the other side of the dance floor, she finally caught Jubilee’s scent, a scent that provoked in her a mixture of relief and anticipation. She turned to look at a group of tables on the other side of the room. Jubilee was there, her back facing Laura, but she wasn’t alone. She was with someone—Laura realized she was with a guy. The guy was leaning toward her, saying something, a drink in his hand. He was leaning in close—close enough to touch her—and then he put his hand on Jubilee’s wrist.

Laura struggled against the crowd. There were so many bodies between her and Jubilee, so many people she had to get through. She felt her breath stirring in her lungs, the heaviness of her limbs. And when she reached Jubilee and the guy, she realized two things, but not until it was too late—the guy was young, just a boy no older than they were, and Jubilee was smiling at him. But before Laura could stop herself, the situation had played itself out. She shoved the boy away, hard. He stumbled into another table and put his hands out to catch himself. 

He looked back at her once, right before he dropped his glass and it broke, splashing his drink. Someone might have gasped, but it was swallowed by the pulse of the music and the drone of too many voices. Then he scrambled, regaining his balance and disappearing into the crowd.

“X!” Jubilee said. Laura realized she’d been shouting her name—that she’d shouted it three or four times. “What the fuck!”

“Was he—” _Was he hurting you?_ she had started to ask.

Jubilee’s expression was one of confusion and astonishment—and then disgust. She spun and walked away.

“Jubilee,” Laura called, trailing after her. 

Jubilee was headed for the exit sign, moving quickly—much more quickly than Laura. She pulled open the heavy door and disappeared. 

Laura raced to keep up with her. “Jubilee—”

They were down the steps and out of the alley before Jubilee turned around to face her. “I can’t believe you,” she said. Laura could see her face for the first time—it was red and blotchy. They were on the sidewalk and people moved around them, not caring about their private drama. “Don’t talk to me.” She turned again and started to move forward. Then she stopped and turned around once more. 

She sniffled. The patch of skin under her eye was wet, and a drop of moisture clung to the end of her nose. “You know, I can handle the fact that most people don’t trust me anymore—that Logan doesn’t think much of me, and that the rest of the X-Men think I’m a killer.” She took a gasping breath. “But I never thought that you—just go away.”

“Jubilee, I wasn’t—”

“I can control myself, X,” she said. “You thought I was going to hurt that guy? Kill him? Like I can’t fucking turn it off?” She took another long, shaky breath and wiped her eye with the back of her hand. 

“I don’t think that.” How could she explain to Jubilee what she had felt when she’d seen her with the boy? She wasn’t thinking about Jubilee’s instincts, or even about the kiss she was about to share with the boy. She was thinking about after the kiss, when everything could shift and collapse and turn dangerous. The time after the kiss was a precarious one; it carried with it a world of hurt.

“Yeah right.” She paused. Then her voice grew quiet. “I’ve changed, X. Everything’s changed in the last few months. I don’t need Wolverine’s blood anymore. I don’t even live with the X-Men.”

“What?”

“Don’t ask me to explain it now. Not to you.” She stared at Laura for a moment. “I don’t assume the worst about you. When we met you were suicidal, but I don’t constantly follow you into the bathroom to make sure you’re not cutting yourself. Or ask you where all these quote-unquote friendships with older men are going. God, I’m not the one who needs to be policed.”

Laura felt her heart speed up. She didn’t know how the evening had gotten to this point, how it had soured so quickly, except that this fight felt oddly familiar and predetermined. She had known all along that she would ruin things—she just couldn’t believe that she had ruined things with Jubilee, whom she trusted more than anyone. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, please. You attach yourself to any grown man who shows you an ounce of interest. First it was Gambit. Now it’s Dr. Pym. Anyone who can serve as a stand-in for Logan, I guess. Because he won’t give you the time of day. Which is nothing unusual, like I said, but you take daddy issues to a whole new level.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Be honest? I thought that’s what we were doing. What you did back there, knocking over that boy so I couldn’t, what? Murder him while hundreds of people watched?” She waved her hand in front of her face. “I think that was pretty fucking honest. So thanks,” she said, and her voice started to quiver again. “Thanks for that.”

There was a long moment of silence. Laura knew that she was supposed to respond; when she didn’t, Jubilee turned and crossed the street.

***

Laura didn’t return to Gambit’s apartment for several hours. She rode the subway by herself. She walked through Central Park. She wondered where Jubilee would go; she couldn’t bear the thought of arriving back at Gambit’s apartment and walking into an empty room.

So when she finally did find herself on Gambit’s street, she was relieved to find his light on. Then she felt anxiety that resembled nausea. What if she and Jubilee fought again? Or worse, what if they didn’t? What if Jubilee ignored her, pretended she didn’t exist?

When she let herself into the apartment, she was already thinking about all the strange maneuverings she would have to make throughout the weekend—how she’d have to return Jubilee’s shirt and ask Gambit if she could stay somewhere else. And he would ask why, and she’d have to explain what happened. And she might even have to explain to Logan, too. And then she’d go back to Avengers Academy, which would seem like a relief, except that when she got there she’d relive the fight, and it would grow bigger in her mind. 

As Laura set her keys on the bookshelf, she noticed that the apartment was mostly dark. Only the light in the kitchen was on. Laura paused there, running her hands over the smooth countertop. _Kitchen_ , she thought. All the schools she’d attended had provided meals in a dining hall or cafeteria, but the living quarters often had a small, communal kitchenette where you could microwave popcorn, or heat soup over a stove. Those kitchenettes were nothing compared to Gambit’s kitchen, with its accoutrements and expensive appliances. 

Laura opened the refrigerator to take stock of what Gambit was drinking these days. But what drew her attention was the row of carefully labeled plastic containers of what Laura knew was blood— _Saturday AM, Saturday PM, Sunday AM._

She stood in front of the refrigerator and felt terrible. 

Jubilee’s voice came from the other side of the apartment: “Laura?”

Laura closed the refrigerator and headed to the bedroom. 

The light was on in Gambit’s room. Jubilee lay on her side, facing away from the door, but when she heard Laura approach she turned over. Then she sat up. Her hair was messy and her make-up smeared. She had been crying.

“Jubilee?” Laura said, still standing in the doorway. She didn’t know whether or not she was being invited inside. “I’m sorry.”

Jubilee held up her hand. “No, I’m sorry. What I said to you totally sucked. I felt like it wasn’t even me saying those things, you know?” Her face scrunched up; she was going to cry again. 

“Please don’t cry.”

Jubilee was trying to catch her breath. “A lot of what I do doesn’t seem like me. Even after all these months. It’s like I still can’t get myself back.” She took a few deep breaths. Her crying seemed to have exhausted her.

“No, you were right. It was wrong of me to . . . to knock over that boy. I didn’t mean to ruin your evening with him.”

“Oh, it’s all right.” Jubilee shook her head as if deciding that the entire thing was too insignificant to talk about. Her breathing evened out. “I doubt that Nick and I would have found true love and moved in together. Well yeah, maybe we would have and you ruined the whole shot—” she snapped her fingers and managed a small smile—“but somehow I doubt he would have stuck around once he realized I’m a vampire.”

Laura didn’t laugh. 

Jubilee dangled her legs over the bed and studied her nails. “You wanna know the truth? I’ve kind of, like, given up on that angle of things anyway. Not that I was ever one of these marriage-obsessed girls who has to have a boyfriend. But now it seems . . . I mean, what’s the point? Even if I find a guy who’s okay with the fact that I can only hang out at night, and okay with my weird dietary restrictions, he’d also have to be okay with the fact that I can’t have kids.” She caught Laura’s eyes. “And oh yeah, I’m going to keep looking like a teenager. Forever. Which is pretty damn pervy.”

“What about other vampires?”

Jubilee set her hands on both knees and looked straight ahead. “That’s a small dating pool.”

Laura sagged against the doorframe, hands in her pockets. “When I saw you with the boy—I didn’t knock him down because I was trying to protect _him_.” 

Jubilee looked up. She narrowed her eyes.

Laura took her hands out of her pockets and crossed her arms over her chest. “I wish I could say that I don’t feel like myself either. But that’s the problem—I always feel too much like myself. This is me. I'm always this way. And when I saw you with the boy--” She extended one hand. "I was afraid."

Jubilee's gaze was steady, thoughtful. “Laura,” she said. She scooted to the end of the bed and patted the spot next to her. “Come here.”

Laura left the doorway and closed the space between her and Jubilee. Jubilee put an arm around her shoulder. 

“You know it’s okay to be close to people, right?” she said. “Nothing bad is going to happen. Not always, anyway."

Laura swallowed. Nodded. She wondered if Jubilee believed this sincerely, or if she was just saying what sounded right.

“Just because you get close to someone, doesn’t mean that they’re going to hurt you. Or that you’re going to hurt them.” She bent one leg so that her knee touched Laura's. "You don't _always_ think people are going to hurt you, do you?" 

Laura swallowed. She looked down at her lap and waited for Jubilee to shift her gaze to something else. When she didn't, Laura finally looked up again and into Jubilee's eyes.

Jubilee's eyes were questions. "You can't go on believing the worst, X. About yourself, about other people. You just have to put it out of your mind. If I thought all the time about what Xarus did to me, I wouldn't be able to, like, function." She patted Laura's shoulder. "Oh, X. You don't believe me at all, do you? Trust me, ninety-five percent of people want to do what's good and right."

“How do you know that?” Laura said. "How do you know that a particular person is part of the ninety-five percent?"

Jubilee was quiet. She ran her hand along Laura’s back. “I don’t know. I mean, I don't know how you know—I don’t think there’s a way to ever really know.” She paused. “You can be pretty sure, though, if the person makes you happy.”

They sat there for a few minutes, neither of them saying anything. Then Jubilee took her hand from Laura’s back. She wove her fingers through Laura’s.

Laura sat there, staring straight ahead. She didn’t know how to react to Jubilee without betraying her nervousness—she didn’t want to say something that would derail the moment (“Do you think Gambit’s coming home tonight?”), or that was stock and sentimental (“I like having you as a friend”). 

This was her problem—she could never live in a moment without trying to know all its possible outcomes.

Jubilee reached behind her again, draping her arm over Laura’s shoulder. Then she pulled her closer, and Laura knew that the situation had shifted and turned. 

Laura licked her lips and finally tilted her face to look at Jubilee, and Jubilee looked back at her. And without thinking anymore, she kissed her, and Jubilee kissed her back. And Jubilee’s hands were soft, like water, and they grazed her back, her neck, her chin. Laura circled her arms around Jubilee and pulled her closer. 

Outside the world was dark. It would be dark for several more hours.

Laura wanted more of Jubilee’s softness. She wanted to be held under, as if in a bath. She guided Jubilee’s hand to the underside of her breast, and Jubilee surprised her by pushing her shirt up. Her hands covered Laura’s abdomen.

They eased back onto the bed and broke off the kiss. Jubilee lay beside her, her hand still cupping Laura’s abdomen and waist. Their hips were touching.

“I wouldn’t hurt you,” Jubilee whispered. 

“You couldn’t.”

“I _wouldn’t_ ,” Jubilee said, this time more firmly. 

_Couldn’t_ , Laura thought, knowing that she and Jubilee shared the same meaning, even if their words didn’t quite match.

Laura rolled over so that she was partly covering Jubilee. “I don’t know what I’m—I mean, is this . . . I’m not crushing you, am I?”

Jubilee laughed a little bit. But the laugh wasn’t at anyone’s expense—it was just a laugh, and it relieved Laura. “You’re heavier than me, but it actually feels good.” And she ran her fingers through Laura’s hair. “Laura,” she whispered. And they kissed again.

They stayed like that for a long time, kissing and touching. Their legs were tangled. Then Jubilee pulled hers up to wrap them around Laura, and her dress got bunched around her waist, and Laura reached between them. Then she pressed herself against Jubilee and rocked there, applying pressure.

Jubilee’s eyes were closed. She moaned once. Her skin went from brick-cool to afternoon-warm, but she stayed soft. And when she came it was as though she was breaking through the surface of water. She kissed Laura hard.

***

They fell asleep soon after they finished, Jubilee’s hand still in her hair, their clothes tangled in the covers and scattered around the bed. Laura felt calm; it wasn’t difficult to drift off while listening to the rhythm of Jubilee’s breathing. 

She woke later, disoriented at first. Jubilee slept soundly. Laura shook off her sleep. She had the feeling that something had woken her—had someone slammed a door?

That’s when she heard footsteps approaching. In one instant she knew it was Gambit, and in another instant she knew she wouldn’t have time to react. She closed her eyes.

Gambit stood in the doorway—paused for just a moment—and then walked away. In the grainy light she saw his back disappear down the hallway. Then she heard him in the kitchen, moving about quietly, taking pains not to wake them.

She sat up, reaching for a shirt and some pants. She tugged on her clothes and left the bedroom. 

He was in the main room, scanning his bookshelf, looking for something. He looked up when he saw her, smiling but not surprised. “Hey petite,” he whispered. “Don’t mind me. Just picking something up.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. “For the wedding?”

“Yep.” He straightened. 

“How was the rehearsal dinner?”

“It was okay.” 

“Did you find out where you’re sitting at the reception?”

He paused a moment—he hadn’t been thinking about it. “ _Non._ Don’t worry about me. I’ll live.” He studied her. He was processing new information while trying to remain nonchalant. “You sleep well?”

She nodded. 

“I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”

“You don’t have to go,” she said. “It’s your apartment.”

He retrieved a book from his shelf. “You guys have breakfast on me. I’ll leave some money on the table.”

“Stay. Have breakfast with us.”

He looked at her again—really looked. His eyes contained a mixture of happiness and sadness; he didn’t mind feeling those emotions all at once. “Laura,” he said carefully. He stepped forward and put an arm around her. Kissed the top of her head. “Don’t look for it to end,” he whispered into her hair. “It does that all on its own.”

Then he touched her shoulder and moved away from her. “I’ll pick you up this afternoon,” he whispered, letting himself out of the apartment.

When he was gone, she went back into the room where Jubilee slept. The morning was still new and undefined, not quite light. She would have no trouble going back to sleep. In the bed she felt anchored and calm, ready for whatever came next.


End file.
